BY STAFF REPORTER
The outbreak of the coronavirus about a year ago has added one more, but a huge workload on the daily life of individuals. People have to use sanitisers and face masks, dispose of the used ones and use a new one every day.
While the effective use of these preventive materials is worthwhile in fending off the looming public health threat, the impact on solid and medical waste management is formidable.
Since the pandemic has led to an abrupt collapse of waste management chains, safely managing medical and domestic waste is crucial to successfully contain the disease.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) also stated that COVID-19 creates additional challenges in waste management in developing countries. Inadequate and inappropriate handling of healthcare waste may have serious public health consequences and a significant impact on the environment.
While the pandemic itself is an imminent public health threat, the associated appalling danger is that mismanagement can also lead to increased environmental pollution. All countries facing excess waste should evaluate their management systems to incorporate disaster preparedness and resilience.
The use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) and single-use plastics during the pandemic not only increases the quantity of medical waste but also alters the average density of the medical waste. Waste generation amid COVID-19, especially discarded PPEs and single-use plastics, has been an environmental and public health crisis around the world particularly in the countries with developing economies and those in transition.
Safe solid waste management is a matter of major concern to many developing countries like Ethiopia where the safe and sustainable practice is scarce and healthcare waste has not been adequately regulated.
The current rapid surge in healthcare waste due to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to further exacerbate the problem and there is an immediate threat that the impacts of unsafe disposal of healthcare waste will spill over into a crisis of environmental pollution.
Unsafe disposal of healthcare waste not only pollutes the environment but also conduces to the spread of other infectious diseases. Collecting and managing solid and human waste is an important challenge for countries across the world.
This problem is often magnified in cities where a dense concentration of people leads to a substantial amount of waste generation.
Generally, discarded healthcare waste and other forms of clinical waste are disposed of in a sanitary landfill or incinerated in the form of waste to energy recovery.
However, in many developing countries, healthcare wastes along with municipal solid waste are dumped in the open or in poorly managed landfills where the movements of waste pickers and livestock such as dogs, goats, and cows often have been noticed.
Only a few countries apply advanced technology to treat their medical waste by steam-sterilized or chemically disinfected, but they are exceptional.
Although many developed countries have shown good management of COVID-19-led medical waste, China, similar to many countries with developing economies and those in transition, has shown effective and successful measures against the COVID-19-led medical waste management.
Since 2003, after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) breakout in the region, more than 30 legislative orders and emergency management orders on environmentally sound management of medical waste have been implemented in China.
The lesson and successful measures in Wuhan and other parts of China gained from SARS and COVID-19-led medical waste management could be a piece of valuable information for the many developing countries coping with a sudden increase in medical waste.
The city of Wuhan in China generated nearly 247 tons of medical waste per day at the peak of the pandemic, nearly six times more than before the pandemic. The peak occurred from 15 February to15 March. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the city has about 50 tons per day of medical waste disposal capacity with an average output of 45 tons.
This capacity was solely based on an incineration plant which normally operated 24/7, without any extra reserved or storage disposal capacity for medical waste management.
With the rise in the cases of COVID-19 in the city, the output of the medical waste also increased to 110–150 tons per day in mid-Feb and kept increasing up to 247 tons per day at the peak of the outbreak until March 15, afterwards it gradually declined back to normal in mid-May.
After the third weeks of January, when the local authority realized that the medical waste was running out of the existing capacity to safely disposed of the rising amount of medical waste, they searched for strategies from different levels of experts and decided to involve four companies specialized in solid waste management including Gient, which claimed to have built a 30 tons/day capacity emergency treatment plant by Feb 22 to treat around 25% of total medical wastes generated in the city during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Ethiopian Herald 18 April 2021
